After coffee and a cigarette, Peter smoothed down his shirt front, pulling out the right amount of slack to cover his growing paunch, before making sure he had everything he needed for work and stepping out of the house. Drizzle fell on the scattered remains of a kebab on the pavement. As he turned to lock the door a movement in black caught his eye. A headscarfed Asian girl was coming out of the house two doors away: Mark’s house. As she walked past him, her face partly covered by a hand pulling at her scarf, he caught a glimpse of dark eyeliner, the outline of her cheek, her slender red-jewelled nose and delicate mouth. Peter stared after the girl as she hurried to the end of the street, turned the corner and vanished.
He must have made a mistake. How could such a vision have appeared from a hell-hole like that? From Mark’s house? That thug? Did Asian girls do that kind of thing? Muslim girls? Weren’t they out-of-reach, mysterious beauties, untouchable and unreal? Perhaps she’d come from the black family’s house next door to Mark.
By the time he reached Bushbury, Peter had had enough of the self-important opining of the Radio 4 presenters and switched them off. Silence was better than the Today programme. He watched the first children making their way to school. It was too early for the young white mothers in red England shirts pushing prams.
At the roundabout for the M54 his thoughts returned to the Muslim girl coming out of Mark’s house. He was sure it was his house. Peter didn’t know the bloke that well. Maybe he had all sorts of friends. Not that he’d noticed any mixed couples in Wolverhampton before. In London he had, but they were anglicised middle-class Hindus, he presumed, and they had the air of people who had met on campuses and married soon after graduation.
His thoughts wandered at the traffic lights in Bloxwich as he pictured the headscarfed girl passing him in the street, and the fine profile of her face.
The van driver behind him sounded his horn.
18
Beauty Begum found an empty café and asked the large woman in a pink apron behind the counter for a pot of tea and a piece of flapjack. The smell of frying haram food didn’t bother her. Let other people eat what they wanted.
It’s a free world, aynit?
The woman called her ‘dook’, and said she’d bring it over.
‘We ay busy at the minute,’ she said, and winked at the pretty Indian girl.
Beauty chose a seat with her back to the wall, away from the windows. She had an hour to wait until the Jobcentre opened. She reached across to the next table and picked up a newspaper. It would pass the time and give her an excuse to drink the tea slowly.
She hurried past the topless white girl on the inside page, and tried to work out the stories from their photos: an open-mouthed bearded man, fist outstretched, shouting about something – Pakistani probably; that Prince boxer next to a picture of a smashed car; the beaten-up face of a man lying in a hospital bed next to a smaller photo of a group of hooded white boys; a row of girls with oiled bodies and bikinis; girls in white underwear lying on a bed touching each others’ thighs, with speech bubbles coming from their mouths.
She looked up as a small Indian man slipped into the seat at the table next to hers.
‘Oright?’
Beauty kissed her teeth and studied a picture of a Sikh with a large nose throwing a cricket ball.
‘You go to that RiteSkills course too?’ he insisted, spreading his toast.
‘So?’
She knew his type. London was full of Asian perverts like him, trying to pick up young girls in the street. Unless you were wearing a niqab. And sometimes even then.
‘It’s a bit early, innit?’ he said, looking at his heavy gold watch.
‘I’ve got to go to the Jobcentre.’
Beauty watched him suck margarine from his hairy, gold-ringed little finger. He was short, his high heels barely reaching the floor. His curly, blow-dried hair was dyed black. Yellow margarine clung to the hairs of his dyed moustache.
‘It do’ open till nine o’clock, y’know,’ he said.
‘I know that.’ Beauty covered her face with her hand and turned the pages of the newspaper again, staring unseeing at the row of near-naked bodies.
‘Nice girls in there?’ he asked.
She shut the paper.
No Asian bloke’s gonna say anything rude to me again!
‘What you doing out so early?’ she asked him. ‘Perving at young girls in cafés? What does your wife say about that?’
The little man tried to laugh it off, but Beauty had gone before he could answer.
Mark Aston went downstairs in his shorts to make some coffee. He’d heard the Paki bird – sorry, Bengali – leave the house earlier. He sat down on the sofa, scratched and looked at the small rucksack by the front door. He’d told her she could leave it while she sorted her shit out up town. He’d be at home later on. Where else would he be? Bob hadn’t rung him with any work for today, and he couldn’t be arsed going to that course.
Waste a fookin’ time – better off giwin round the garages and looking for a proper fookin’ job.
He rolled a cigarette. At least he had enough ’bacca left for the day, but that was all, apart from the sixteen pence on top of the television. The only other thing he could think of was to get a ten of weed on credit, and sell half of it to Pete. Then he’d have something to smoke and a fiver to get a few cans.
Beauty hurried down Darlington Street towards the Crown House Jobcentre, keeping close to the shop windows. Her brothers wouldn’t do anything to her in front of other people, but she didn’t want to see them anyway. Perhaps they wouldn’t think to look for her there. Dulal would probably send the little one to watch the RiteSkills place.
A group of silent people waited outside the closed doors of Crown House. Beauty tried not to look at anyone. She thought about what to say to Jackie, her adviser, but was drawn to the worried expressions of the others’ faces. A black guy paced about muttering. An old lady in a violet mac smiled at Beauty when their eyes met. A white boy leaned against the wall in a black tracksuit and white Nike plastic cap, one foot raised under him.
They got problems, too?
The doors opened at nine o’clock and the black guy rushed inside. The white boy let Beauty pass before peeling himself off the wall and following her into the building.
A uniformed black security guard took up position next to the glass doors and metal detector, and gave each person a quick glance.
Beauty waited in line. She gave her surname and National Insurance number to the receptionist at the Client Enquiries desk, and explained that she needed to see her adviser urgently. She took her ticket and sat down away from other people, but as the queue lengthened the seats began to fill up near her.
Don’t let anyone sit here.
A thin, pale-faced Asian woman in jeans and an army jacket, with bulging eyes and unkempt hair, came towards the empty seat next to Beauty, dragging a large-eyed five-year-old boy in an anorak. Beauty smiled at the boy hiding at his mother’s side, and leaned forward to poke her tongue out at him. The child squirmed out of view behind his mother.
The woman dragged the boy out to stand in front of her.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘He’s really naughty.’
‘Are you naughty?’ Beauty asked him. ‘He’s beautiful,’ she said to the mother.
‘Apni?’ she asked Beauty. Are you one of us? ‘Kya toom Pakistani ho?’
‘No, I’m Bengali,’ said Beauty. ‘Are you from this place?’ she added, to avoid answering more questions.
The woman was happy to talk about herself as they waited. She’d left Manchester with her Hindu boyfriend five years ago to have their baby. Her family didn’t want to know her or the kid and she hadn’t seen them since.
Five years without seeing her Ama! For a Hindu bloke!
Beauty prompted her, and listened to the flow of words as she stared into the boy’s large eyes. At least this lady had a child to look after.
She doesn’t have to worry about herself.
When
her number was called Beauty was relieved to get away from the woman and her story. She made her way past the other advisers’ desks and the backs of their ‘clients’ to the far end of the room.
A plump, middle-aged woman in a blue skirt and jacket stood up and smiled.
‘It’s Beauty, isn’t it? How are you? Take a seat.’
Jackie remembered her well. The girl had sworn at her when she gave her the application form for the Basic Skills course.
Beauty sat down on the blue office chair and said nothing.
‘How can I help? How’s the course going?’
‘I had to leave home.’
Beauty bit her lip and looked at her hands on her lap.
Jackie understood. She’d had diversity awareness training in Walsall. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ Beauty said.
‘Have you got somewhere to stay?’
She thought of Mark’s bathroom. ‘No.’
‘Have you got any money?’
The question hurt, but there was no one near enough to hear. ‘I can get some – maybe a hundred pounds.’
‘Have you got any friends you could stay with?’
Beauty shook her head. Jackie felt she was asking the wrong questions. Weren’t there often mental health issues surrounding cases like these?
‘And you can’t go back?’ she asked. The girl shook her head again without looking up.
‘Are you pregnant?’
‘No!’ Beauty said.
Was she? After a night at the white bloke’s house? Isn’t that what her mum had said? No. That Somali witch had laughed at her. You had to lie down with no clothes on like she had seen Hana doing. She shook the image out of her head.
‘Have you suffered at home from violence or abuse?’
‘No! They aynt like that!’
‘I’m sorry, I have to ask.’ There would be more money and resources available for her if she’d suffered domestic violence. Or if she was pregnant.
‘It’s family stuff,’ Beauty said. ‘They want me to get married.’
Jackie nodded. ‘Are you in any physical danger?’
‘No!’
Am I?
Jackie had seen the stories in the newspapers of women found buried in suitcases with their throats cut. There was no point in asking the girl much else. She tried to imagine what the girl might have been through. You could never tell with Asians. This one seemed different, more alert than most of the dead-eyed zombies she usually saw, prodded along by their brothers or fathers, or by mothers who spoke no English. Jackie was fed up with it. Now that ‘mandatory referral for training’ had started, she saw the thunderous-looking Indian women, on her walk to work in the mornings, hobbling and waddling across town to the various private training providers – another pointless exercise, from what she had heard so far – which had sprung up everywhere. At least her caseload had shrunk, though; she’d lost nearly half her clients. Some had found jobs to avoid being sent on the lengthy courses; others had simply signed off. Most, however, had tried to switch over to Incapacity Benefit. But the word from the DWP was that IB claimants were next on the hit list. They had six months at most until she’d have to start weeding out the serial malingerers among them.
She gave Beauty the list of refuges, telling her to come back at two o’clock when they could go through the domestic crisis forms together. The girl deserved more help than most of the troubled white kids she had to deal with. Like the one coming towards her in the black tracksuit and white cap. Jackie sighed.
‘Hello, Chris.’
‘Yeah right,’ the boy said, sitting down and resting his elbows on her desk. ‘I still ay bin fookin’ paid. What you diwin’ about that?’
19
Beauty knew the lady had felt sorry for her and wanted to help, but it was shameful answering her questions. At least she hadn’t had to talk badly about her family, and she might get enough money – five hundred pounds the lady had said – from the Crisis Fund to get a room to rent. Maybe she could find an old white landlady, with a cat, and she could look after them both.
Who’s gonna take a Paki girl in?
She walked back up Darlington Street, searching the faces ahead for her brothers. The pawnshop Mark had told her about was opposite the other Jobcentre, near the bus station. Cash Generators, he’d said it was called. They bought everything.
She found it easily. The windows were full of televisions and stereo equipment, computers, cameras and PlayStations. A small display area was reserved for jewellery. Beauty looked at the rows of sovereign rings, bracelets and necklaces. Cheap, white people’s stuff. Not like the proper Asian gold in her pocket.
People came and went as if it were a normal shop. Maybe it wouldn’t be so embarrassing after all.
A young man with spots and a crest of dyed blond hair directed her down some steps to the buying counter, where a small queue of people waited. Some clutched plastic bags or stood with boxes of household appliances between their legs. A man emptied a rucksack of DVDs onto the counter, and a tall shop assistant checked each case for the disc.
‘We can give you a pound a film,’ he said.
Beauty could only see the man’s wide frame and shapeless washed-out clothes, but she heard the anguish in his voice.
‘You gimme two quid each for the other lot!’
‘These aren’t major titles. Do you want to sell them?’
‘I’ll have to, wo’ I?’
The assistant made a pile of the DVDs and carried them to a partition at the end of the counter. The goods were checked again, the man signed a form, received the money and left, shaking his head.
Beauty looked away.
This is shameness.
Another assistant, a fat man with a badly tucked-in, beige nylon shirt, appeared from a side door. The queue shuffled forward. Two Indians took mobile phones from a supermarket carrier bag and put them on the counter. The fat man whistled.
‘These ’m ancient!’ he said, unpacking them. ‘I can’t give you more than …’
The men waited.
‘… four pound fifty.’
‘Each?’ one of the men asked.
‘For the pair. These things belong in a museum.’
The two Indians looked at each other.
‘Kya pessa lélu?’
‘Ha, lé lé.’
‘We’ll take it.’
Beauty looked away again as they came out from behind the partition.
*
When her turn came she took the gold bangles from her pocket and put them on the counter, proud of their rich colour.
‘Do you want to sell or pledge?’ the fat man asked her. She’d get more if she sold them, he explained, rather than borrowing against them. The price would depend on their weight. He gathered up her bangles and went to the side room to weigh them.
Beauty stood at the counter and waited. At least she’d have the money for a B&B for a few days. She could have a bath, and sleep.
The man returned.
‘I can give you forty-five pounds for them.’
Forty-five pounds? They were worth three times as much. She felt sick and her face burned. She looked up to protest, but stopped. Forty-five pounds for five years of misery. She wanted to snatch them out of the fat man’s hand, but knew she couldn’t.
She went to the cubicle to sign the form and poked the thin roll of bank notes into the pocket of her jeans under her kameez.
Faisal Rahman watched his older sister hurry away from the shop and back towards the town centre. Bhai-sahb had let him bunk off school to come and look for her, but it had been his idea to hang around outside the Jobcentres.
20
Beauty headed back towards Dunstall Park. She’d know tomorrow whether she would get a crisis loan from the social fund, and how much it would be. Her adviser had told her that based on her age, number of weeks signing on and her ability to repay fortnightly, she might get three hundred and twenty pounds. Jackie had read the questions alo
ud and filled in the forms.
As for the RiteSkills course, she would have to stay on it.
Her brothers would find her there, Beauty said.
Unless she moved away from the area, Jackie told her, she’d have to carry on attending. If she wanted a placement in a care home for the elderly, it would keep her off the course and out of the way of her family. Jackie could arrange it for her straight away. She could start on Monday.
Old people who have no children to look after them.
Beauty agreed to try.
In the meantime Jackie recommended going onto Incapacity Benefit in case the placement didn’t become a permanent job. She’d need a sick note from the doctor, though.
Beauty told her she wasn’t ill.
Stress from family matters, Jackie said, and that she’d had to leave home. That’s all she would have to tell the doctor and he’d understand. Lots of sick notes crossed her desk each week, she assured her.
On Newhampton Road Beauty ignored the admiring glances of men, her eyes fixed on the pavement, and stopped at a phone box to call the B&Bs from the list Jackie had given her. The cheapest was twenty-five pounds. She had enough for one night. She’d get her bag from the white bloke’s house, thank him and go.
What about tomorrow?
Mark Aston was hungry and hadn’t moved for an hour. When he heard the faint tap at the door he got up from the armchair and looked through the grey net curtain.
Beauty came in and sat down on the sofa where she had slept the night before. There was less rubbish on the floor, the beer cans and plates of food had gone, and the air was not as bad. Had he sprayed something?
‘How d’you get on? What d’yer adviser say?’ he asked her.
‘She told me to go on the sick. Incapacity Benefit.’
‘What with?’
Beauty scratched her forehead to cover her eyes.
‘Stress,’ she said.
What is that?
Mark nodded. ‘Good idea. Fookin’ ’ell, yer adviser mooss like you. That’ll be an extra tenner a week. Did you apply for the crisis loan?’
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